Tag: Tegra 4

Currys and PC World to peddle Tegra Note 7

Posted on November 6, 2013 by - News

tegra-tabIn a rather surprising development, Currys and PC World will be selling Nvidia’s Tegra Note 7 tablet under their own brand.

The Advent Vega Tegra Note 7 as it’s known, will be available in stores and online from November 15, but pre-orders will be available tomorrow. The price is £179, slightly less than the Nexus 7, but quite a bit more than Tesco’s Hudl.

Although it has a different brand, the hardware is identical – Tegra 4 SoC, 7-inch 1280×800 IPS display, 1GB of RAM, 16GB storage and a stylus to boot. The only difference is the sticker.

Here is the interesting part. Although we speculated that some players could sell the Tegra Note 7 under their own brand, when it was announced, Nvidia said it would be sold by five AIBs, one or two handling every major region. Nvidia never mentioned retailers.

If Currys and PC World and willing to give it a go, and if Nvidia is happy to offer such an arrangement, they might be the first of many retailers to adopt Nvidia tablets and sell them under their own brand.

In addition to the Tegra Note 7, Nvidia is also working on a few other Android devices. The Shield console is already out, although it lacks the mass market appeal of tablets. However, Nvidia is also working on a reference phone platform (Phoenix) and rumour has it that other tablets are in the works, too.

Nvidia announces Tegra Note Android tab

Posted on September 18, 2013 by - News

nvidianoteNvidia has announced its very own Android tablet platform, the Tegra Note, readied by the company and brought to market by its partners.

Nvidia boasts that, rather than just providing a low cost and high quality build for Tegra 3, as with the Nexus 7, this is a “complete platform”. Partners include EVGA and PNY Technologies, Oysters, ZOTAC, Colorful, Shenzhen Homecare Technology, and XOLO, which will be joining HP, Asus, Toshiba, Kobo and Xiomi in Tegra 4 products.

So far Nvidia is a little late on the tablet front. The company does have products out there but not as many as it likes.

Tegra Note, however, will sport a Tegra 4 72 core GeForce GPU and quadcore Cortex A15 CPU, with the promise of battery saving tech. The company boasts this will make the Tegra Note the “world’s fastest 7 inch tablet”. It will also ship with Nvidia’s DirectStylus tech which should give users more precise and responsive control with a normal stylus.

Nvidia PureAudio will ship, too, which the company says includes the “widest frequency range in a tablet” through front facing stereo speakers and a bass reflex port.

This product sounds like a solid release compared to the gaming curio, Nvidia Shield, an experiment in remote PC gaming – as long as you’re not too far away. Tegra Note will ship with TegraZone for exclusive Tegra optimised graphics, and the company claims you’ll get a massive 10 hours of HD video playback.

Additionally, a range of accessories will be available, including an intelligent cover with built in magnets, the DirectStylus Pro Pack, and Bluetooth capabilities that turn the tablet into a controller. Over the air software updates will be sent out by Nvidia directly to keep software patched and up to date.

Retail prices will start at $199, taking on other low-cost but high performance tablets in the market.

Nvidia’s tablet push starts to take shape

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News, Opinions

tegra-tabNvidia is trying to reinvent itself and make up for lost ground on the PC front with Tegra, but simply designing chips isn’t enough for the GPU maker.

Earlier this year Nvidia showed off the Phoenix, a mid-range smartphone based on the upcoming Tegra 4i. Then it introduced the Shield, a curious little device which aims to combine PC streaming and Android gaming in one package.

There has been talk of Nvidia tablets for months and even that is hardly news. Nvidia’s first crack at the tablet market came last year, but it went under the radar. Kai was the name and it was a loose reference design for cheap tablets based on the Tegra 3, much like a Nexus 7. It never took off.

Now it seems Nvidia is ready to ditch reference designs and sell tablets under its own brand and the floodgates opened. Yesterday it emerged that the company trademarked “Tegra Tab” in the US, while Fudzilla reported that a high-end tablet based on the upcoming Tegra 5 is coming in early 2014. Today a Chinese tech site leaked the first images of an actual Tegra Tab. The photos reveal a 7-inch device with stylus support, microHDMI output and a rubberized back, similar to the Nexus 7.

There is still no word on specs, availability or pricing for the device, but the leaks are shedding more light on Nvidia’s tablet push. Like most tablet makers, Nvidia appears to be gunning for two form factors, 7 inches and probably something close to 10 inches. Tegra Tab is the brand name, but we’re not sure how Nvidia plans to play it out. It’s practically certain that Nvidia will roll out tablets under its own brand, but it might offer the exact same platform, perhaps even the brand name to its hardware partners.

Nvidia decided to design and market the Shield on its own. Since it is a rather odd device which doesn’t fall into any existing category and doesn’t compete with other Tegra products, the decision made sense.

However, if Nvidia starts selling tablets based on its latest SoCs, it could irk quite a few of its clients. Tegra 3 got plenty of traction in the tablet market, but Tegra 4 won’t replicate its success. The Tegra 3 powered a bunch of Android tablets last year, including the Nexus 7 and other Asus models. It also ended up in the Surface RT, which flopped quite spectacularly.

Now that Tegra 4 tablets are few and far between, it should be a lot easier for Nvidia to come up with its own tablets without burning too many bridges. Nvidia posted some rather disappointing Tegra figures in its latest earnings report yesterday and it pinned part of the blame on the failure of Windows RT. CEO Jen Hsun Huang admitted that Tegra revenue won’t recover in the short term.

Although the market for Android tablets is booming, much of the growth appears to be coming from cheap white-box tablets. Big vendors are struggling to turn a profit on high-end Android tablets and even hot 7-inchers aren’t doing very well. Entering the Android tablet market at this point is a bit like invading Russia in November.

So what’s behind Nvidia’s decision to start building Tegra based tablets, consoles and phones? It might be strategic thinking, diversifying and going after new markets should appease investors in the short term, although it might be a while before Nvidia’s Tegra consumer hardware operations turn a profit. Nvidia is no longer in consoles, the high volume low-end graphics market is disappearing and the Tegra business should fill the gap, backed by high-end consumer GPUs and professional graphics. Nvidia could potentially start bundling Shield consoles and cheap tablets with high end cards or allowing embattled AIB partners to build tablets based on its reference designs.

The other explanation is desperation rather than long-term strategic thinking. Tegra 3 was the company’s biggest success in the SoC market to date. It ended up in the HTC One X, Nexus 7 and Surface RT, along with a bunch of other devices. Even so, it wasn’t a big seller as the combined shipments of the Nexus 7 and Surface RT are estimated at 6.5 to 8 million units, depending on who you talk to. Asus and other vendors also used the Tegra 3 in their own designs, but very few of them actually shipped. Tegra 4 was late, too big and too hot, so it scored even fewer design wins and it doesn’t power a single phone.

Even if Nvidia somehow manages to score the majority of high-end Android tablet design wins, it would not end up with impressive volumes. An HTC One or Galaxy S4 routinely outsell all high-end Android tablets combined. Meanwhile Tegra 4i won’t be ready for the next four months and even when it ships it will go after mid-range phones. Nvidia is running out of options, fast. If it doesn’t score any high-volume design wins with the Tegra 5, it might have no choice but to use its chips in its own gear.

That is not a strategy. That is doing the only thing that can be done and calling it a strategy. That is tactics.

The writing is on the wall for Windows RT

Posted on July 18, 2013 by - News, Products

surface-rtOver the last week or so we witnessed a flurry of Windows RT news, some positive, some very negative indeed. Late last week Microsoft decided to slash the prices of the Surface RT by as much as $150 in an effort to make the uncompetitive tablet a bit more appealing to the average consumer on the prowl for a cheap media tablet.

In June, Microsoft announced that it would release Outlook 2013 for Windows RT tablets, which is clearly an attempt to gain a bit more traction in the enterprise segment. The decision not to include Outlook in Windows RT at launch was baffling, and still is. The first reviews of Outlook 2013 for RT are in and they are positive, but it really should have been included months ago. With the upcoming 8.1 update, it should land on all RT devices, provided there are still RT devices by the time it appears.

This is no laughing matter, the lack of actual Windows RT products is becoming a serious concern. For example, Lenovo has just dropped the Yoga 11 convertible from its web shop. Dell and Asus have also slashed the prices of their RT tablets. Some players like HP ignored Windows RT altogether, while some gave it a go and dropped it, like Samsung. What’s more, all vendors are focusing on proper Windows 8 tablets instead, based on x86 chips.

In fact, the only hardware maker that still seems to be taking Windows RT seriously is Microsoft itself. The Surface RT price cut is a way of clearing inventory and making room for the next generation Surface RT, or a couple of them. At this point it seems that Microsoft is working on two different designs. One is reportedly based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC, while the other one will be powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 4. Rumours of a smaller Surface RT have been floating around for months and there is a good chance Microsoft will roll out a 7- to 8-inch design along with a new full-size 10.6-incher.

Unfortunately it seems to be too late. Future Windows RT tablets, including the Surface RT in both rumoured flavours, will now have to compete with tablets based on Intel’s new Bay Trail chips. This was not the case last year, when the Surface RT was opposed solely by ARM based Androids and iPads. Now it will face tough in-house competition in the form of Windows 8.1 tablets powered by Intel’s x86 Atoms. What’s more, Bay Trail is shaping up to be a beast. It is said to be faster than the Snapdragon 800 and it doesn’t need much power, either.

With new x86 SoCs from Intel and AMD coming online, it is hard to see why Microsoft would want to stick with a specialized tablet OS, designed for ARM. The next generation of Windows 8.x tablets is expected to end up a lot cheaper than the first generation, leaving very little wiggle room for Windows RT. Small wonder then that many brands aren’t getting on board, since they seem to believe Windows RT will be dead as disco within a generation or two.

It seems that the only practical way to keep Windows RT alive in the long run is to stick it on dirt cheap tablets designed to take on bargain Androids in the 7- to 8-inch range. This probably won’t work, as Windows RT is rather bloated and it’s far too expensive to make sense on such cheap devices, unless Microsoft agrees to practically give it away for free. Since we are talking about Microsoft, this will happen when hell freezes over. In theory at least, Microsoft could keep Windows RT alive, but we’re really not sure it should.

Nvidia reportedly working on phone and tablet reference designs

Posted on January 28, 2013 by - Gossip, News

nvidia-gangnam-style-330pxNvidia has been frantically trying to carve out a foothold in the mobile SoC market over the past couple of years and with every new Tegra generation it saw its number of design wins double.

However, that doesn’t seem to be enough for CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. According to Mobile Review, the chipmaker is planning to kick things up a notch, by directly entering the smartphone and tablet business with a bit of help from its partners.

Nvidia is said to be working on reference smartphone and tablet designs. The designs will be built by contract manufacturers, under Nvidia’s direct control. The partners are apparently small regional players, basically retail chains who already offered cheap Chinese tablets under their brands. It is unclear whether traditional Nvidia AIBs will also join the effort, but it seems more than likely, as some of them have already started making inroads in the tablet space, without Nvidia’s support.

The idea seems to hold water. Nvidia could control the feature sets and performance of reference designs, while regional players could take care of distribution and retail. Nvidia partners could end up with cheap, yet competitive devices capable of taking on first-tier devices with fancier brands. The drive is said to be scheduled for May and June, roughly Computex time, and Mobile Review’s Eldar Murtazin believes tens of 7- and 10-inch tablets based on Nvidia’s reference design could show up.

Nvidia already has extensive reference design experience and plenty of partners in the graphics market, so such an approach would be nothing new for the company. However, last year Nvidia also offered Kai, a reference tablet design based on the Tegra 3 SoC. It did not find many takers. Back at CES, Nvidia unveiled Project Shield, a Tegra 4 gaming console built under its own brand, but we haven’t seen any Tegra 4 design wins yet. The chip is apparently a couple of months behind schedule, due to some technical issues which necessitated a re-spin.

We should see more Tegra 4 gear at the Mobile World Congress and Nvidia is also expected to launch a cheaper, A9-based quad-core SoC in the latter half of the year. The reference design approach could help Nvidia gain quite a bit more design wins this time around, provided it doesn’t flop like Kai.